Dems face a long brawl

For months, Democrats have congratulated themselves on an embarrassment of riches: Two larger-than-life politicians, both potential history-makers who symbolize the party’s celebration of diversity. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama both won admiration from lots of people backing the other candidate.

Well, forget all that.

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The up-with-people phase of this contest is over. The clear-the-benches phase has begun — a brawl that now is more likely than not to continue until the Democratic nomination in late August.

Obama’s failure to win Ohio and Texas and lock down the nomination — combined with Clinton’s newly defensible decision to press on despite a deficit in delegates — virtually guarantees Democrats a draining contest that will give Republicans a months-long head-start on the general election.

It will heighten racial, ethnic, gender, and class divisions already on stark display, raise awkward questions about the legitimacy of the nominating process, and inflict potentially lasting wounds on the eventual winner.

And forget about any chance that this looming brawl will be quieted by claims from Obama and commentators that Clinton has no reasonable path to victory.

Yes, Obama’s math is impressive — more delegates, more popular vote support, more states won. But Clinton aides argue reasonably that a race this close can be altered by a virtually limitless number of tactical maneuvers, unexpected events, or shifts in public perception.

For now, Clinton’s victories validated a last-ditch strategy that aides acknowledge rests overwhelmingly on persuading Democrats that the most credible black presidential contender in American history — despite his lead — is too untested to be awarded the nomination.

Simply put, there is now no way Clinton can win without inviting not only disappointment but a powerful sense of grievance among the Democratic party’s most loyal constituency, Obama’s fellow African-Americans.

The preparedness argument will be coupled, her advisers say, with two additional objectives that also are custom-made to produce months of chaos and ill will.

The first is an in-the-trenches fight to persuade unelected super-delegates to nominate Clinton as the stronger general election candidate even though Obama almost certainly will be leading among regular delegates.

The second is an effort to seat delegations from Florida and Michigan — where Clinton won — even though both pledged not to campaign there and Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan. Democratic rules currently do not recognize those states because they acted unilaterally to schedule their primaries.

But if Clinton wins Pennsylvania — where she is for the moment the favorite — there is no reason to suppose that the nominating contest will be any more settled than it is today.

It will no longer be possible for Democratic National Committee chairmen and other party leaders to avert their gaze from the stand-off, as they have for all practical purposes been doing for several months. Some Clinton aides Tuesday night indicated the campaign might be open to a re-vote in these states, as the best chance to get these delegations seated and backing her.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) said the state would be for the new primary, making a do-over much more likely.

For all the blame-casting and anxiety among Democrats, their contest is a mess — a glorious one, for devotees of political theater — for a simple reason. Both Obama and Clinton are resting their candidacies on arguments that are fundamentally true.